Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#81

Post by rlpb » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #55

doublerabbit wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father worked on the early 90's contract that implemented the speed camera's on the motorway. The future road map was to make these digitally automated. Dark Fibre was laid but the plans were scrapped as the government saw it as a waste of money. This is why we are stuck with the ludicrous system. For a long while if you were changing lanes while speeding through the camera it couldn't capture the plate. Again the…

I'm not sure what the technology by which the data from the speed camera is downloaded has to do with identifying the driver? The reason for this "ludicrous" procedure is that the police can identify the owner of the car (based on the license plate), but not the driver , so the owner has to say who was driving. And all of this has to be done in a way that will hold up in court, therefore snail mail. The same procedur…

> And all of this has to be done in a way that will hold up in court, therefore snail mail.

This needs to change. Snail mail is no longer reliable. Letters often get delayed by weeks or go missing altogether, but the law still assumes that justice is being done by it being sufficient to assume that a letter that was posted has been received within a few days. It's no longer true.

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#82

Post by belorn » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

sensecall wrote: post #30

londons_explore wrote: post #7

For context for international readers, the UK has a lot of speed cameras and other automated ways to give out fines. These get sent by snailmail to the 'owner'[simplification] of the vehicle using a government database. The owner must then, within a deadline, say who was driving the vehicle at that date and time. If the owner fails to say who was driving, they have committed a criminal offence, and will be fined. It…

It's a ludicrous system – I've experienced it first hand. If for some reason the letter isn't delivered (or indeed sent), the original offence is scrapped and a new offence issued for Failure to provide information. Frustratingly, there is no obligation on the Police to provide proof of posting, and per the law, it is deemed received once sent. Try proving you didn't receive something...

The primary alternative is to have signed delivery, in which case some people will simply refuse to sign it and thus prevent delivery. Signed delivery is the way the postal service usually differentiate between normal delivery which has some kind of error rate which the postal service do not take responsibility for, and the signed service which usually carry some insurance (up to a maximum) of delivery.

The US has their Service of process which is commonly seen in movies, which is often made into a joke in comedies.

A much older system is the one where by law people had to put a notice in the news paper, sometimes multiple notices, and then that was considered enough proof of delivering the notice.

It would be an interesting conversation to philosophy how a future system should be designed that can't be refused, where delivery to the recipient is guarantied, and where the sender and the delivery service must produce proof of their parts.

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#83

Post by cbeach » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

BigTTYGothGF wrote: post #46

lingrush4 wrote: post #33

[flagged]

You switched accounts before reposting. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733330 )

lingrush4 and me (chrisbeach, the OP of that comment) are unconnected. Likewise mjparrott.

And I didn't realise my original comment was flagged (!). Thanks to whoever vouched for it.

Quite sinister how people misuse the flagging tool on this site, to try to hide any opinions they find personally inconvenient

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#84

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #55

doublerabbit wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father worked on the early 90's contract that implemented the speed camera's on the motorway. The future road map was to make these digitally automated. Dark Fibre was laid but the plans were scrapped as the government saw it as a waste of money. This is why we are stuck with the ludicrous system. For a long while if you were changing lanes while speeding through the camera it couldn't capture the plate. Again the…

I'm not sure what the technology by which the data from the speed camera is downloaded has to do with identifying the driver? The reason for this "ludicrous" procedure is that the police can identify the owner of the car (based on the license plate), but not the driver , so the owner has to say who was driving. And all of this has to be done in a way that will hold up in court, therefore snail mail. The same procedur…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#85

Post by cbeach » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

EmptyCoffeeCup wrote: post #57

dmix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More specifically Tesla basically just paid a small set of automated speeding camera fines on behalf of their leasing customers, which include some glorified late charges because they didn't reply promptly.

Very happy - the £100 fine isn't the problem, it's the points/day-wasted-on-useless-course that is the real deterrent to speeding. And before people say "think of the children" and "I learned something I should have already known on the course" - Speed limits are increasingly being changed for political reasons: Safety has nothing to do with it, therefore, these arguments no longer stand (my local authority is determ…

Yes, anti-motorist policy is thinly veiled.

Local councils are willing to admit they are directly harming the interests of people peacefully going about their legitimate business, in order to try to manipulate their behaviour.

It's all such zero sum thinking. Rather than reducing congestion (and thus pollution) by making the roads more efficient, they prefer to make them LESS efficient (with LTNs, modal filters, speed bumps, chicanes, one-way etc) in the hope that this will discourage traffic. All it does is move the congestion from one place to another, and make the situation worse overall.

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#86

Post by watwut » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

cbeach wrote: post #79

watwut wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality check: the issue with Donald Trump video manipulation is that media are consistently showing him more coherent and saner then he actually is.

If you'd seen the before/after video clips you'd understand that this is a pretty big deal. The BBC spliced two separate video clips nearly 1hr apart to make out that Trump was an insurrectionist. Original quote: "We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women" Manipulated BBC version of quote: "We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there wit…

And still, overwhelming majority of manipulation os making Trump saner and more coherent

And yes, he was responsibke for the violent attempt to overthrow the election. And yes he is both criminal amd failed businessman.

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#87

Post by jaennaet » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #67

jaennaet wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland automatic camera fines (they're not exactly fines but I have no idea how to translate "liikennevirhemaksu" so work with me here) are the problem of whoever owns the car. If the owner wasn't the one driving the car, then it's up to them to inform the police who was actually driving

Interesting! If I translate it from Finnish to German, Google says something along the lines of "traffic violation fee". Usually you can't punish someone for something someone else has done, but maybe if you call it a fee (which doesn't imply punishment) instead of a fine, you can (at least in Finland)? Reminds me of the fines for using public transport without a ticket in Germany: they're not called fines either, bu…

"Traffic vioaltion fee" is a great translation. As far as I understand the logic behind them, they're meant for relatively minor violations where a fine would be kind of overkill and specifically have to be "directed" at the right person.

The downside is that unlike fines which scale by income here – the term is "päiväsakko" or "day fine", a fine unit that scales with net income – the fees are fixed sums, so unless a person with high income really does something heinous with their car, they're not as likely to get 200k€ (really) speeding tickets.

So now if you're rich you can speed all you want and pay a relatively small fee for it, as long as you're not doing 200km/h in a school zone or something like that

Edit: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4233383

From 2004. He was driving 80km/h in a 40km/h zone.

"Millionaire hit with record speeding fine"

One of Finland’s richest men has been fined a record 170,000 euros ($217,000) for speeding through the centre of the capital, police said on Tuesday.

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#88

Post by monooso » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

cbeach wrote: post #79

watwut wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality check: the issue with Donald Trump video manipulation is that media are consistently showing him more coherent and saner then he actually is.

If you'd seen the before/after video clips you'd understand that this is a pretty big deal. The BBC spliced two separate video clips nearly 1hr apart to make out that Trump was an insurrectionist. Original quote: "We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women" Manipulated BBC version of quote: "We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there wit…

The BBC should not have cut together the footage in the way that they did.

But let's be clear, the edited footage does not misrepresent the nature of what happened; Trump was an insurrectionist.

You don't have to take my (or the BBC's) word for it. Jack Smith's final report [1] makes it clear that Trump knew what he was doing on January 6th (emphasis mine):

> ...the evidence established that the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay.

The main reason Trump wasn't charged with insurrection was down to the lack of case law (emphasis mine):

> [insurrection] typically involves overthrowing a sitting government, rather than maintaining power...

As such, the case would likely be bogged down for years as Trump attempted to wiggle through his favourite loophole, "nobody anticipated such an awful person being in charge."

[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-full-special-...

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#89

Post by sensecall » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #82

sensecall wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a ludicrous system – I've experienced it first hand. If for some reason the letter isn't delivered (or indeed sent), the original offence is scrapped and a new offence issued for Failure to provide information. Frustratingly, there is no obligation on the Police to provide proof of posting, and per the law, it is deemed received once sent. Try proving you didn't receive something...

The primary alternative is to have signed delivery, in which case some people will simply refuse to sign it and thus prevent delivery. Signed delivery is the way the postal service usually differentiate between normal delivery which has some kind of error rate which the postal service do not take responsibility for, and the signed service which usually carry some insurance (up to a maximum) of delivery. The US has th…

Perhaps, though I’m fairly confident that given enough thought we could fairly quickly come up with a much better process; and without the risk of convicting individuals because of unsent or undelivered post.

Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

#90

Post by limagnolia » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #26

philwelch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a horrible system. Britain used to be famous for the professionalism of their police and now they can’t be bothered to make a traffic stop and give people speeding tickets face to face.

I disagree. As much as I hate speed cameras, the way they’ve been implemented (meaning, the fact that you get a letter with evidence and it’s clear you committed the offense, and usually no points, like you might get from a cop) seems to strike a balance of fair punishment. Now, whether they’re that effective at reducing speeding is a bigger question. Because people just slam the brakes for the 100 feet around the ca…

Are the UK cameras non-mobile and clearly marked? Making the cameras mobile and not making them obvious should fix that problem.